Home

My recent semi-annual cold kicked off a trip to one of my five nearby mega-drug stores. You know the ones: everything from baby aspirin in Aisle 2 to snow shovels in Aisle 35. I hoped to find some new over-the-counter miracle drug to help me get through the long sniffly, coughy, sneezy days and nights I felt coming on.

I read there are 200 different viruses that can cause the common cold, making a vaccine impractical. Is there a reason they can't whip one up containing all 200 viruses so that we could get it over with at once? OK, maybe a booster shot once a year to keep up with the mutations. In the meantime, I guess we have to just work on relieving the symptoms.

I'm sure you're familiar with the 30-foot aisle of cold remedies at the store. I was not short of choices. To start, I wanted something for my annoying cough, and there among the hundreds of colorful bottles and boxes was one that seemed most likely to help. It promised to act on my brain's cough control center.

What could this be, this Cough Control Center? (Capitalized here because of its obvious importance). In fact, wouldn't our bodies be equipped with a Control Center for the entire cold? With subcenters for each misery, not just the cough?

I envisioned a tiny but sleek office, bristling with electronics, nestled in some warm spot in my brain, a setup similar to a NASA flight control center. There would be banks of terminals monitored by operators bent over keyboards, glancing nervously now and then at a 20-foot status screen on the wall. An authoritative mission-control voice -- someone responsible for conducting my cold -- intones over the speaker system, "Cough Control, prepare initial dry cough."

"Ready, sir."

"Execute on my mark... 3... 2... 1... Now!"

HACK!

"Cough successful. Nice work, Cough Control. Fire at random when he starts to fall asleep, beginning in eight minutes, at 12:01 a.m. and continuing through the night. Jerry, get me the Mucous Management Desk... Right... Jeff, how is it going over there? Are the tanks filled?"

"Tanks all filled, sir. We're going with Thin No.1 to start, and have timed a two-nostril trickle to start at 2:30 a.m., but we have plenty of Heavy No. 10 for Phase Two."

"Jeff, I know you're new at mucous management, but how many times have I told you to hold back on releasing Heavy 10 until I give the order? Ted over in Cognitive Planning tells me the subject will be making an important presentation at work tomorrow. The idea is for us to wait until he gets on the bus to the Port Authority, then transition to an intermittent flow of Lite 6. That will let him know he's in for something, but it will make him think he's going to get through the day. When Optics reports that he's standing in front of his company's senior people preparing to speak, you will initiate the maximum flow of Heavy 10. Sneeze Operations, are you getting this?"

"Sneeze Ops here, sir; yes, got it. Optics to advise initiation of helpless sneezing in conjunction with start of Heavy 10. If I may say so, sir, Optics says it's always fun to watch him figure out what to do with his hands after he's sneezed into them. We've recorded some. Can we show them at lunch?"

"Maybe later, Sneeze Ops; we're all busy right now."

"Temperature Elevation here, sir. Requesting a go-ahead. Should I use the standard protocol?"

"The standard protocol is standard for a reason, Ted! It's designed to keep the subject uncomfortable, but just this side of calling a doctor and getting some fool prescription meds that will foul up Mucous Management and Cough Control. Do I have to do all the thinking around here?"

HACK! ... HACK!

"Seems random dry coughing has started successfully, sir. I will commence Temperature Elevation Protocol immediately."

"Control Center! Control Center! We are detecting an attack! It's a... it's a... wait... it's just a Vitamin C assault and that left-over antihistamine he's been trying since 2002."

"Just ignore them. When will he learn? The real question is, has the Immune System been triggered yet?"

"We're safe for a while, sir. Viral Intake reports that Immune is busy clearing up after the attack of food poisoning he got from leaving some beef stew in his microwave for three days."

"Well, they'll pick us up soon enough -- and then we'll be out of work until he catches his spring cold. But at least we have a week's worth of fun ahead of us. And we haven't even started with the sore throat and chills yet."

"Yes, sir. Chills. I love it when they shiver. It kind of tickles."

HACK!

Bernard Jacks is a freelance humor writer who lives in Marlboro. His columns have appeared in the N.Y. Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications.